Digital Platform Governance under Project Temporariness: From One-Off Coordination to Reusable Capability

Construction is organized through projects that are temporary, multi-actor, and contract-bound. This mode of organizing allows flexible resource assembly, but it also creates a persistent management problem: project data, working routines, relationships, and responsibilities often disappear or weaken when the project ends. Digital platforms are increasingly used to connect project actors, retain data, structure workflows, and support decision-making. Yet the key question is not whether construction organizations adopt platforms, but whether platform governance can convert one-off project coordination into reusable organizational capability. This research topic focuses on digital platform governance under project temporariness. It treats platforms not as isolated tools, but as socio-technical governance arrangements that organize interaction among owners, contractors, designers, suppliers, consultants, technology providers, and other project actors. In this view, the technical side of a platform includes shared data structures, interfaces, analytics, automation, and algorithm-supported functions. The social side includes decision rights, access rules, accountability, incentives, trust, conflict handling, and responsibility after project completion. The two sides are mutually shaped: technical design affects who can see, decide, learn, and control, while governance choices affect how platform data and functions are used. The central problem addressed by this collection is the tension between temporary project coordination and reusable organizational capability. We invite studies that examine when platforms help construction organizations retain and reuse data, routines, relationships, and capabilities across projects, and when they fail. Platform failure is especially important in temporary settings: participants may lack incentives to maintain data, project-specific rules may not travel to later projects, platform responsibility may become unclear after handover, and short-term project pressures may prevent platform practices from being internalized. The collection is organized around three research questions:1. First, how do digital platforms transform temporary project interactions into reusable capabilities? 2. Second, under what governance conditions do platforms lead to different outcomes, such as learning, control, exclusion, or renewed fragmentation? 3. Third, why do platform governance arrangements fail in temporary construction settings? Topic editors: Kaiyang Wang, Yuanyuan Hua, Dongping Cao, SHENGHUA ZHOU Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/82038/digital-platform-governance-under-project-temporariness-from-one-off-coordination-to-reusable-capability